Jędrzej IC in ELT Test

Jędrzej Niemczyk
1. How have borders changed in your country over time?

Borders in Poland changed over time due to expansion, wars, partitions, WWI and WWII. During
the partitions Poland disappeared for over 100 years. I think that these changes affected us as a
nation in many ways, positive and negative but also they opened us to the experiences with other,
various cultures and languages, sometimes different in every aspect.
2. To what extent do the national and regional borders reflect the languages spoken there?
I think that national borders affect Polish in a way that it is only naturally spoken here in Poland. It
is not seen in any other places apart from migrants speaking it in their destination countries.
When it comes to regional borders Polish has 7 dialects, some of them are associated with a group
of people living in a given area such as Kashubian dialect which is utterly different from Polish in
general. So Polish people live in one country and may not understand each-other. What is com-
pelling is that Poles call outdoors mostly in two ways: dwór or pole. It is strongly associated with
geographical sense of belonging.
3. How do we associate words and meanings? How and why do we understand that the word
'dog', 'pies', or 'chien' refers to the set of creatures you might find in google after searching
for „dog”?
I believe that we associate words and meanings start with meanings which are generated by expe-
rience, non-verbal experience, sensory experience with the world in which we live. When we think
about a pre-language man, he/she created signs, symbols which were supposed to mean some-
thing, symbolize what they saw, experience. We assign words to meanings; we do not assign
meanings to words for then we are assuming meaningless words waiting for meanings which is
pointless. Over the years people created new words to the meanings for example velocity at some
point was a new word created by I. Newton. We perceive the world by our own experiences, so
meaning vary, words may be similar but meanings to concepts, feelings, situations are most likely
to vary.
4. Concepts, and not just words, vary across languages. Why is this a challenge involved in
moving between languages.
I think it is a challange to more across the languages because sometimes a word in one language
has more than one meaning to us but for the other person it may have a completely different
meaning, which will cause a commotion and people may end up in misunderstanding. For example
when I think of the word anxiety I associate it with a feeling of fear, discomfort and stomachache,
but it has many other meaning. To a psychologist it will have a different meaning, a meaning which
suggest directing someone to a psychiatrist. Also in Polish we have a word lęki which is supposed
be similar but for me has utterly different meaning and is not carrying whatI mean while ex. de-
scribing someone’s state.
5. In one of the steps you were asked to think about the idea of semantic space and whether
you can think of examples of how the space is divided differently across languages that you
know. What examples do you remember?
I don’t remember this concept from the course.
6. How many words do Eskimos have for snow? Do Eskimos really have hundreds of words for
snow? And what would it mean if they do?
This is because there is more than one Inuit language - it is only one group of languages in a wider
family called Eskimo-Aleut. The reason this language family has so many words for snow is that of
polysynthesis.
7. Do you have words from your own language that you think may be unique to your social
grouping and its culture? Explain what they mean, and why you find them useful.
I think that one of the most unique words in Polish is szept because when you say it out loud you
still sound like you were supposed to whisper owing to the sz sound. I find it rather entertaining
than useful but still the word whisper in Polish indicates that you really should whisper. I also
think that the word przypał which is a slang for accident. It’s very modern and in my age group
quite popular. I find it useful because it describes a situation in a single word.
8. How much does language shape the way we think? What do you think might be the argu-
ments for and against this? What is your viewpoint?
I think that languages shape the way we think because we associate meanings to the words, so if
we broaden our intralanguage than we find that one can describe particular situations or emotions
etc. in a different way. Being a foreign language speaker allows people to see the world in differ-
ent colours. There are so many crayons in the box, so why shouldn’t we use more or all of them to
describe what we feel, see, experience? I think that there may be a few arguments against that
languages shape the way we think because if one divides culture from language it may not shape
the way we think. But fortunately we cannot set language and culture apart, they influence ea-
chother.
9. What makes a good translation? Have you ever used online translation software and re-
ceived a strange result? If so, why do you think the translation was inaccurate? Does a
teacher need to be a translator too?
A good translation captures the spirit of a text without slavishly following it to the letter. A good
translations captures and expresses what is between the lines, allowing to capture the essence. I
also captures the energy of the speaker, it reflects author meaning and his vocabulary.
Yes, I used translation a couple of times and the results were awful and strange, it didn’t capture
what was meant. I think that the teacher should be able to translate in order to clarify information
for his students. I think it allows teachers to more confident when his/her students ask them a
question concerning meaning, usage of particular words etc.
10. Can you give a few examples of how languages conceptualise the world in subtly different
ways? These differences can be due to environmental or social differences, or just because
the languages have evolved separately from one another.
One of the examples on how we conceptualize world is how we describe space. Speakers of Eng-
lish and many other languages describe space in words like right, left, high, low etc. And it is most
likely to be understood in various languages. For instance, there is a Aborigine tribe in Australia
that uses North, South, West, East to describe space. They use it in conversation in the daily basis.
Their language forces them to be vigilant all the time. You need to know your position in order to
point something out. Even to move your friends cup not to left but to the East. That is fascinating.
In the Turkish language people use different verbs describing if something which was done you
saw, heard, read someone do it. Consequently if we present a sentence Elton John read a book
Turkish speaker would have know if he/she heard that Elton did it, saw it etc.

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Jędrzej Niemczyk

1. How have borders changed in your country over time?

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